Shame Machine: an owner’s manual

Friends, I’m writing today to announce that I’m hard at work on a new book, called:

Shame Machine

an owner’s manual

It’s once again being written with my editor Amanda Cook at the publisher Crown Random House, just like Weapons of Math Destruction. The tentative release date is January 2021, after the next presidential election.

The idea of the book is to understand shame as a social mechanism. When, why, and how do we shame each other? Who profits from shame? Who maintains power or gains power through shame? When is shame valid, and when is it simply mean and cruel? How is shame delivered in the age of big data?

I come to these questions because of the proliferation shame-based interactions and strategies in politics but also interpersonally; from my experience of getting my insurance company to pay for bariatric surgery, to observing people interacting viciously on Twitter, to hearing how teachers were unfairly scored with the value-added model, it seems like shame is the informal glue that holds our system together. So naturally I started nerding out bigtime.

Shame Machine is a culmination of quite a bit of thinking and writing, research and personal development that I’ve been busy with for the last couple of years. Readers of my blog will have noticed that I’ve been posting a lot less, and this is why. Where I tried out a bunch of ideas for Weapons on this blog, and heard back from you guys (thanks again!), this time it’s quite a bit more personal, so I’ve been hesitant to write about it openly while I was still thinking it through. Suffice it to say I’m sure you readers would have had lots of great advice, and hopefully I’ll be able to ask you for thoughts in the future.

Anyway, I’m out of the hibernation/ideas/planning phase and into the writing phase, and it’s both amazing and scary.

As a new writer, I’m following what happened to Amélie Wen Zhao and I’m aghast. Public shaming forced her to cancel a book that wasn’t yet available for the public to read, so that we could…you know…form our own reasoned opinions. What would the Twitter mob have done to Vladimir Nabokov, had they been around then? Or Salinger or a host of other authors who pushed our boundaries? What’s the point of the First Amendment when its impotent “protection” folds in the face of mob shaming?

This might be a separate phenomenon from what you’re considering, but your bringing up shame reminds me of the lack of it in certain parts of our public life. When it comes to some kinds, more might be better.

Shame is SUCH a strong motivator of behavior, both in our desperation to avoid it being applied to us, and the (usually) inexplicable desire to cause it in others. It’s so universal, that you’ll find plenty written about it various disciplines. perhaps most prominently in the academic and popular psychology and sociology literature. Shame in childhood seems to be the source of many horrific acts in adulthood — inflicted and self-inflicted. And we unfortunately have access to thousands of social media enabled examples every day.

Those involved in selling many types of consumer products have a good handle on the science of shame as well.

I’m thinking your challenge will be deciding how to keep the book a manageable size. Even so, I hope you can reserve at least part of a chapter, though, for productive uses of shame avoidance, e.g. filing taxes, charitable acts and contributions, being a good friend, obeying traffic laws…

I’m so glad you are doing this. Shame is present in my life each and every day. I maintained a 140 lb weight loss for 25 years, but when I turned 40 my thyroid crapped out. I have a sister who thinks I MUST be a secret binge eater. I stopped talking to her for a while after the last time she said something that betrayed her suspicion.

It was still hard, because I was with thin people every day for 25 years, most of whom didn’t know I had been fat as a teenager and the agony it caused. Actually, some of the men were overweight, but that’s ok for men in our society. I believe that if you are fat at 12, you will feel fat all your life. People say terribe things about fat people when they think no one fat is around, but if you feel fat, those things hurt you just the same. I look forward to reading your experience, and your strength and hope. If the insurance company approved the surgery, you will be at least close to thin by then. Will you add an epilogue about what it’s like to not be fat-shamed every day?

Congratulations! This sounds like a fantastic project. I can’t wait to read it.

On the subject of books I’m looking forward to reading, on the top of my current list is Kate Manne’s “Down Girl.” Shame came up in an interesting way in her recent interview with Ezra Klein, as a key contributor to the logic of misogyny, which she conceives as a societal, rather than sociological phenomenon. Anyway if you’re looking for something to listen to on a long bike ride, you might enjoy their conversation:

Thanks, yes, I listened to that interesting interview last week. I like it a lot except for her take on young white boys. I don’t think they’ll all become Buddhists any time soon, and I think she underestimates the pull of Jordan Peterson and people like him.

Looking forward to this. Examples: Amazon’s leaving the NYC project, the grilling of Facebook (Sheryl Sandberg and Zuck, and why not e.g. Google too?), Parkland Shooting and March for Our Lives (shaming of Marco Rubio for NRA support), the shaming of companies for ads (check out Sleeping Giants), …

Congratulations on your second book, Cathy! This topic is fascinating, and I can’t wait to read your take on it. As an educator myself, I’m amazed at the impact, both negative and positive, that shame can have on students. Great title, too!